All posts tagged communication

When living a life full of activities, projects, deadlines and other calendar driven things, where can you turn when you ask: “How do I add more meaning to my life?” What can you do when you want to explore the inner meaning, maybe not with as much passion as what is already consuming your life, but at least with some inquiry? Is there something more to life worth pursuing? I think so.

I still remember, when, years ago, a marketing consultant for my business, asked me, in my first assignment, to identify my values. At first, I was puzzled by this request as I was ready for the big idea to implement. But she was right when she said” To build the business, we must begin with you knowing your values, the foundation of who you are and what drives or motivates you.” I nodded with skepticism as I had no idea of the benefit to looking at my values. She gave me a list of values and told me to identify my top 3 “Oh, that should be easy “I thought, as I looked at the words. But then, as I looked through the list, I found that most of them were significant. How would I choose just three? I did not know my top values. I do now and for the last 20+ years, every year, I refer to them constantly in both my personal and professional lives. But why?

From that exercise years ago, I learned that values are our guiding principles. They tell us why we are motivated to take certain actions, why we decide to say yes to one thing of seeming import, and say no, to yet another. Our guiding values lead us. As they lead us, and as we let them guide us, they help us to simplify our lives and pursue that which matters, with passion, purpose and success.

The power in our values is distinct. Think about a person who has had a powerful and positive impact to you, in your life. What is important about them to you? It’s likely a value will come up that is very important to you, one you still key to you today.

Our values act like an inner compass. We decide whether to listen and follow them or not. When we do, we feel more centered; when we don’t, we tend to feel more confused or rudderless.

I was recently involved in a robust online conversation on mansplaining. As soon as the topic was raised, opinions started flying in, ranging from irritated frustration at the experience to recharacterizing mansplaining as verbal kidnapping. I would have remained a spectator to the group conversation until verbal kidnapping was presented as a description to mansplainng. That was my moment of: “Wait a second, that seems a little much.”

Mansplain is defined in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary as: to explain something to a woman in a condescending way that assumes she has no knowledge about the topic.

As I have experienced mansplaining, I thought I would bring it up here to gain perspective and understanding. Here, in part, is what I shared with the online conversation.

“I am adding to this robust dialogue as I cannot reconcile the phrase ‘verbal kidnapping.’ (with mansplaining). Kidnapping means: take by force. This is different than taken by surprise or be overwhelmed or belittle or even attempted to connect with.

Having come up in male dominated industries, financial, jazz guitar, and entrepreneurial success, I have experienced it many times, sometimes overt and sometimes covert. For quite some time, I took it personally, like they were exhibiting behaviors because I deserved it/asked for it/put out the vibe/looked like I wanted it/was a target for their unloading. Eventually that turned to understanding that it was not about me, they did not even know me but they needed to wield their power/show me who’s got the upper hand/offer friendly unsolicited advice/want to show off/join the conversation/demonstrate how intelligent they were/demonstrate how keenly aware or observant they were being/ and more.

Initially, I either stood stunned or snorted out a weak comment only to fine I was fueling the fire, the fire of false objectives and false perceptions by the mansplainer. I then shifted to inquiry in my attempt to gain understanding as to their intention with being so directive with me.

So, how do I deal with it today? IT DEPENDS. It depends on the situation, my perception of their intent, that which I want to protect within myself, the point I want to make….

For one person I might cut them short to end a ‘correction’ or added ‘expertise’ they want to interject.

For another person, I might let them go on until I see an opening and then end the conversation in full awareness that their behavioral habit will continue with someone else. I choose not to take the time to get into the fray.

For yet another person, I may ask them their intent on sharing with me as I want them to be clear as to whether they perceive me as unprofessional/unqualified/not at their level or perplexed at my keen insight which might contrast with my small stature. 😊 These may all come into play. I can then respond more appropriately with more clarity

I no longer initially judge mansplainers to be foe. And it’s not just mansplainers, there are womynsplainers. The wolf wears either gender sheep’s clothing to get in to the stall!

Tell me your thoughts? Have you been mansplained? How do you deal with it in a way that preserves the essence of who you are, your values?

I have always enjoyed being a steward of money. Even as a kid, I would count my money; I was excited to open a bank account; I would plan on money expenditures, I thought about money and how to best use it. As a young adult, I thought about how to ensure I had extra saved money; I enjoyed the world of investing, although, as a woman, back then, there was not a lot of support for women in money matters.

So, I was stunned to recently read an article about women and money that included sobering findings from a Fidelity Investments Money FIT Women Study. Surveying 1,500 women, this survey found that 8 out of 10 women don’t talk to family or friends about money. That is chilling to me. The study also revealed that 50% of those interviewed, mostly Gen X and Yers, said they are nervous talking about making financial decisions! What the what the?!

Even today, where so much is available and expected of us, it seems we don’t include financial literacy as an area to master. As a result, and according to the Fidelity study, women have a confidence gap when it comes to financial literacy.

Is this true for you? Do you feel yourself avoiding money conversations? If so, what can you do to change this behavior and mindset. Here are three tips to begin your positively affect your relationship with your money.

Take a moment to answer this question: How do you want money to play an active an enabling role in your life? Answering this question allows you to finally understand what money means to you. Knowing this gives you clarity about how you really view money. It may be that you don’t get money, or, you don’t respect it or, conversely, that you want to get a handle on it but don’t know how.

If it is easy for you to accumulate debt and spend more than you have, ask yourself: What is in it for you to continue this habit? Really stop and respond to this with clarity. We tend to do things either because there is a benefit to doing so, because we want to sabotage ourselves, or because we are avoiding dealing with the topic of money.

What first step can you commit to make a, one, not all, just one, present unproductive habit move into the shadows of your life rather than being in the driver’s seat to your life? Taking a small step can begin a journey of steps that eventually become a pathway to sustainable and successful habits and behaviors around money.

Need more help? Contact me. Having women be successful in life with their money is important to me! I hope it is to you, too.

Several years ago, Emory University commissioned a study. The study was hosted by two prominent Emory psychologists, Robyn Fivush and Marshall Duke, and a former graduate student, Jennifer Bohanek. They wanted to understand the impact of family stories to a family’s dynamics with their adolescent members.

“Family stories” the researchers wrote, “…help children understand who they are in the world.” These unique and important stories help children understand who they are and where they come from, in a different way, but akin to the DNA tests available for us to take today. Neither of these will tell us who we are going to become, but they do shed light into that which brought us here.

The power of the important story is its experiential transmission of connectivity. Before this study, researchers had an inkling that family stories contributed to a child’s well-being and identity but had not measured their ideas. Now there was evidence. The study found that the teenagers in the study expressed “…higher levels of emotional well-being, and also higher levels of identity achievement, even when controlling for general level of family functioning.” Wow!

Although this is the first study of its kind to use a Do You Know Scale of measurement, it certainly is, for some, an eye opener, while for others, confirmation, on the power of important family stories.

What is your family’s story; not the where when or how, but the story of who and the why of the family? Your family story is a thread, a link to identity and connection. Tell it to your family.

Recently, I read an article about regret. Of course, it included the biggest regret people have, which I will disclose a little later. But first, what, exactly, is regret?

According to the Miriam Webster Dictionary, the definition of the noun regret is: “1-sorrow aroused by circumstances beyond one’s control or power to repair and 2-an expression of distressing emotion (such as sorrow).” I find those to be interesting definitions and I feel I need to add one more which is remorse or shame not following up or completing that which I had the power to complete or repair but lacked the motivation, strength, or courage to affect. Let’s look at the etymology of “regret” to discover more about its meaning. Regret appears in old Norse as grata, meaning to weep, or groan, in the Proto-Germanic as gretan, meaning weep and in the French as regreter meaning “ pain or distress in the mind at something done or left undone.” These give me a clearer framework to work with when I hear the word regret.

In the article I was reading about regret, authored by Diana Bruk and published online by MSN, six studies were conducted with hundreds of participants. Each participant was asked what they regretted most in life. While people tended to regret their actions (current behaviors or activities) more in the short term, their inactions (things they did not do or behaviors they did not model) were regretted more in the long term. We tend to put off, in the short term, actions, which in the long term, we regret having neglected. But all this was merely a backdrop to what people regret most.

The number one regret people have, according to these six studies is: not fulfilling their ideal self. WOW!!!!

You can avoid this regret. By knowing your values, your mission, setting your goals, both long and short term, then having a method of achieving your goals while expressing your mission and values, you will sidestep this huge regret.

And a shout out to those of you who have taken up the Life Focus System, you model the axiom of living your ideal self. You have constructed ways to return to the path, when you stray from it. You live a life of focused purpose. You reap its benefits, both short and long term.

Millennials, 81 million strong, are being scrutinized by researchers to learn about their financial habits and behaviors. One study, from a USA Today/Bank of America Money Habits Poll, found that one in five millennials are not saving money.

Another survey, hosted by Fidelity, found that over half the millennials had not started saving for retirement. Instead this generational cohort are wrestling with a different top financial issue: paying off credit card debt. As Fidelity also discovered, 4 in 10 millennials they survey worry about their financial future at least once a week.

Is this a case of one generation passing on habits and behaviors to another generation? Is this because money has become harder to understand? Is it because it is too easy to spend money?

I know that when I work with people on transforming their money behaviors and habits, there seem to be three main areas around money that cause major problems. They are:

the inability to communicate about money without a shroud of anxiety layered over the conversation

the feeling of being out of control when there is a constant barrage of decisions to make with your money

No reliable system in place to track, tweak and oversee money habits.

My initial recommendation, if money is a source of anxiety for you, is to step back and answer these four piercing questions:

What does money mean to you?

What do you want it to provide for you?

How far away are you from realizing question two?

Are you willing to do what you have to do to make question two happen?

These are not easy questions to answer, so give yourself the space to answer these fully for yourself. The responses you come up will not necessarily change your habits with money right away. What they will do is help you to become clear as to the purpose of your money so that you can then direct your attention to the areas of communication, control and systems around your behaviors with money.

As you pursue your mastery of money, make this your mantra for the year: “This year, money and I will be friends, and not part company as easy and as often as we did last year.”

Are you building your wealth only to see it gone by the time your great, great grandchildren are growing up and asking about their roots? Most families do not keep ancestral footprints. You can change that by creating a living and engaging family history, footprint, and legacy.

According to research done by The Williams Group, who researched families of great wealth, 70% of families with assets and stories, values and meaning, will find their money gone by the end of the 2nd generation. Shocking? For those 70%, probably yes.

The research continued to find that 90% of families are unable to have their wealth pass on beyond the third generation, in other words, beyond their grandchildren. Why is this?

Families survive and thrive not by money transfers alone, the above statistic evidences that. Families stay together because of a “why.” This “why” is the glue that voluntarily keeps them unified. This “why” includes the history of who you are, where you came from, what shaped you. It is your family’s living legacy.

Consider this: the etymology of Legacy according to the Online Etymology Dictionary stems from the 14th Century French: “legate-body of persons sent on a mission”, and from the middle Latin “ambassador or envoy.” Give your family its wings by creating its legacy. This will keep them connected for generations well beyond your initial contributions.

As you may know, the concept of purpose and its practice is key to happiness. Purpose is difficult for many people to grasp because we are encouraged to be constantly on the go, and to fit in, neither of which speak to purpose. It is easy to wander through life and look back at an advanced age and wonder: “What happened? Why am I unsatisfied? What was my purpose?”

What is purpose? The Etymology Dictionary says that “purpose” stems from the 14th century Anglo-French purposer, meaning “to design.” However, purpose did not just appear then, it had already played an essential role in Asia, the Middle East and civilizations going back millenniums. Purpose is a cornerstone to living a life that matters.

Author and co-founding partner of the Australian company, Sonder, Jonathan Hopkins, wrote in a blog wrote: “Successful organizations (like Nike, IKEA, Ben & Jerrys, Lorna Jane, Apple) all have an idealistic purpose which is followed, worshipped and preached by its employees and customers alike. Without a powerful purpose, leaders will struggle to motivate their employees and customers will struggle to find a reason to connect with the organization.”

What is your purpose and how are you expressing that in your community?

An effective way to view money at home is to regard money education as a process rather than as a single event instruction. When money education is set up like this, money behaviors can be talked about, tweaked and managed more easily.

Here are 3 tips to get you started in developing money stewardship at home:

1 Begin by asking your family members what money means to them. Once the question has been asked, listen, without interruption to their response. It is critical that you not interrupt so your family members feel listened to. They do not want to feel this was a set up question for judgement and commands. When your children feel heard rather than feeling like they are being judged, they will more likely be candid with you in their response.

3 Talk about money. Set up money nights where you talk about topics like: budgets for vacations, issues your children are running into, budgets, how to make money choices, etc. Open up the dialogue with welcomed feedback, with parameters around accountability, develop measurability to plans. All these will develop stewards to money at home.

If you have young kids, and you are wealthy, are your children wealthy? What about your grandchildren, are they wealthy? When I ask these questions to clients, they inevitable pause. I can almost see the wheels spinning in their heads as they consider the money paradigm existing in their lives.

I often hear how they want their kids and grandkids to understand the value of thrift, to see and appreciate how hard it once was, not take money for granted, and yet also give their children and/or grandchildren opportunities and advantages available to them. But how can your progeny learn about life’s hardships when they have private tutors, unique vacations, and financial ignorance?

Money is not often discussed in families with wealth. The Wilmington Trust, in a poll they conducted, found that sixty seven percent of respondents said they were uncomfortable talking about eventual inheritances and only ten percent provided complete information to their heirs.

Concerned that they might thwart motivation, self-worth, and confidence, wealth holders often will askew conversations about money. Hope, intuition, seat of pants guidance are common methodologies, but they are not recipes for success. Trusts and timelines are common tools to allocate money to next generations but neither of these prepare the inheritors from being ready to receive the money. Let me repeat that: neither of these prepare the inheritors from being ready to receive the money. Maybe it’s time to change that paradigm .

Prepare your family for their inheritance. Mentor them to become stewards of that which you worked hard and proudly to accumulate. Ask them what money means to them. Ask them what they would do with money. Give them a small amount of money to see how they handle it. Let them make mistakes while mentoring them towards stewardship.

This is such an important topic, rather than avoid or delay talking about money, use the tools that allow you to create an environment of healthy money conversations and stewardship. Contact me if you want to learn how to talk about money.

Money can become just another conversation. But you need to create that environment so when asked: “Who is Ready for their inheritance?” your children and grandchildren can say: “We are. We are stewards to a legacy. And we are ready in our roles and responsibilities to steward our inheritance.”